Wash That Stain Away - The AI Way!

Back in January last year, when we first heard the surprising news that Microsoft wanted to buy Activision-Blizzard, certain voices suggested the deal might be closed by that summer. Mostly, though, the feeling seemed to be that it would be wrapped up by the end of the following financial year.

It's taking a bit longer than that. The deal is still up in the air more than fifteen months later. I confess to finding the whole process largely mystifying. Angry Onions tried to explain to me in the comment thread to a post over at TAGN, why so many national and regional authorities get to have a say in whether two commercial entities can merge. I understood his reasoning but I'm still somewhat hazy on what supranational mechanism could stop them if they wanted to do it anyway.

Polygon has an excellent, lucid and understandable timeline of progress to date, in which it's stated that "...the Competition and Markets Authority — unlike the FTC in the U.S. — still has the legal power to stop the merger from happening." Exactly how or why a regulatory authority in the United Kingdom should be able to derail a process involving two multinationals of American origin, while the American authorities themselves are apparently powerless to do so without the help of the courts is, I fear, something I'd probably have needed to study either law or economics at University, rather than English, to understand. 

Because I now seem to be incapable of thinking of a question without immediately feeling the need to Ask an AI (Great Gameshow idea there...) as soon as I finished typing that last paragraph I ran the problem past Bard, who gave me a very clear and unequivocal reply.

 I asked

If the CMA continues to block the proposed Microsoft acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, but all other relevant regulators approve it, can the deal go through?

Bard replied

"No, the deal cannot go through if the CMA continues to block it. The CMA is one of the regulators that must approve the deal, and its decision is final. If the CMA blocks the deal, it will not be able to go through, even if all other regulators approve it."

I didn't ask Bard for any background information but Bard really likes the sound of its own voice. It's like one of those annoying people you meet at bus stops who, when you ask them when  the bus is due, insist on telling you the entire history of public transport all the way back to the introduction of the steam-powered omnibus in 1833. (I googled that, just so you know it's not the sort of information I keep in my head.)

As Bard explains it

"The CMA is concerned that the deal would give Microsoft too much power in the cloud gaming market. Microsoft already has a strong position in the console gaming market, and the CMA is worried that it could use its power to stifle competition in the cloud gaming market.

Microsoft has tried to address the CMA's concerns by offering to license Activision games to competing cloud gaming platforms. However, the CMA has not been persuaded by this offer.

Microsoft has said that it is considering appealing the CMA's decision. However, it is not clear whether an appeal would be successful."

Not content with merely contextualizing, Bard then began to extemporize, shifting to the conditional to suggest some possible ramifications:

"If the deal is blocked, it would be a major setback for Microsoft. The acquisition of Activision Blizzard would have given Microsoft a major boost in the gaming industry. It would have also given Microsoft a significant foothold in the cloud gaming market."

Finally, in a move that both surprised and mildly disturbed me, Bard expressed what seems very much like an unprompted, personal opinion:

"The blocking of the deal would also be a setback for the gaming industry as a whole. The acquisition of Activision Blizzard would have created a more competitive gaming industry. It would have also given gamers more choices."

Would it, though? Are we sure about that? I mean, I might have expected something of the kind from Microsoft's Bing, given the issues involved, but from Google's pet AI?

If AIs are going to start acting as though they have opinions and personalities, it's going to open up whole new vistas of possibilities, not all of them appealing. Think of the possible PR disasters when AI-generated celebrities make public appearances! Surely one of the biggest attractions of artificial artists for their handlers is tractability? Reliability? Innocuousness? Okay, that's three attractions but you get the idea.

 If I'd authorised and paid a lot of money for an AI pop star, I'd like to think I could rely on them not to, oh, let's say, picking something purely at random, find themselves arraigned for imaginary acts of "public lewdness" or "firearm possession and assault", even if it was only in the court of public opinion. Then again, maybe it wouldn't be so terrible...

 

Those incidents, traumatic and embarrassing as they may have seemed for the stars involved at the time, became turning points in their lives and careers. As a direct result, George came out and continued to be a much-loved entertainer until his untimely death, while Adam received the help he needed with his mental health issues and returned to being... well, Adam Ant. It's still fine to like George Michael and about as fine as it ever was to like Adam Ant, who is, after all, the man who wrote both "Whip in my Valise" and "Goody Two Shoes", two wildly contradictory accounts of what has been widely assumed to be one life - his own.

 

Things don't always turn out that well, sadly. I'm sure we can all compile our own lists of artists, performers, entertainers, writers and musicians, the mere mention of whose name in polite conversation would be considered in the poorest of taste. To speak approvingly of their work would be positively unthinkable. 

Simon Reynolds posted a fine meditation on the way even the chance of learning something unsettling about one of your favorite artists makes searching for information about them a fraught process. It's a problem I run into almost every time I compile another music post. 

 

In the piece, Reynolds refers to a recently-published book on the subject; Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer. The book has four and a half stars on Amazon but it was rather poorly received by the Guardian's reviewer Rachel Cook, who called it "thin", "ill-researched" and "crude". I have a proof copy but I've yet to start on it so I'll reserve judgment. I will say I'm looking forward to reading it, though.

The core problem both the book and Simon's post address is whether, once you know awful things about awful people, it's possible to go on enjoying their not-at-all-awful work. And if it is possible, is it advisable? Or even permissible?

I am not going to answer that question here. Obviously. I'm not God. Or your spiritual adviser. Or your mother. Neither am I going to express a conviction or even, really, much of an opinion. What I am going to do is ask some more questions. Helpful, aren't I?

We might appear to have strayed some distance from the ostensible topic of this post, the Microsoft/Blizzard story, but trust me; there's a connection. Like many would-be consumers of Blizzard's not-all-that-varied portfolio of games, the revelations of the last few years have put something of a crimp in my willingness to participate, due to not wanting to be seen to be complicit. Put simply, I'd quite like to play World of Warcraft once in a while but I don't want to look like any more of a hypocrite than I usually do. I said I wouldn't play WoW until something changed and as far as I can see, nothing has.

I was rather counting on the Microsoft acquisition to draw a line under the acts of the old regime and allow me to at least imagine a fresh page had been turned. It's a fairly flimsy fig-leaf, given many of the purported perpetrators are probably still sitting at the same desks but I was raised as a Quaker and the concept of forgiveness, not to mention turning the other cheek, is a hard one to erase.

All of which leaves me wondering both where I'll be, morally, if the deal falls through and how, specifically, it will affect me in the future as a potential Blizzard customer living in the legal jurisdiction that derailed the whole thing. If I was Bobby Kotick (Euuuu!) I'd be tempted to cut the pipe to the U.K. and carry on without us. Can he do that? 

There's another aspect to all of this that occured to me while I was trying to find an AI model of Lana del Rey so I could hear what it would be like if she were to cover some of my favorite songs by people she's probably never heard of, let alone heard. Or even by me (Same thing, obviously.). I found myself wondering exactly where the fault-line of corruption lies.

Simon Reynolds uses the word "stain" to describe the way the misdeeds of a creator seep back through the timeline to discolor even the work they made before they did the things we revile them for now. He muses on how far back you'd need to go before listening to Michael Jackson might feel comfortable again; "In the aftermath of watching Leaving Neverland, I found myself speculating pointlessly: "well, probably he wasn’t abusing anyone circa Off The Wall. "  Thriller – hmmm.... gets a bit cloudier."

He doesn't mention it but there's another element to consider: how about cover versions? Hardly anyone is willing to admit to listening to Gary Glitter after the things he's done but damn, Rock `n` Roll Part 1  is still thrilling half a century later, isn't it? If we can't enjoy the original, what about the version The Undertones recorded for John Peel in 1980? 

Does running a song through the filter of another artist wash out that stain? Or does it just spread the taint to whoever was thoughtless enough to cover a monster in the first place? Does it make a difference if the cover was recorded before or after the news broke?

It's complicated but I can make it more so if you want. Sticking just to front-persons for a moment (The question of whether the drummer's indiscretions invalidate the reputation of the entire band being another difficult-to-parse moral poser.) what if you could replace the offending singer with an artificially generated artist of your choosing? Okay, maybe Rock 'n' Roll Pt 1 wouldn't be the best example, what with Gary contributing not much more than the occasional "Hey!", but if you were to strip his vocals out of, say, I'm The Leader of the Gang (I Am), and replace them with Freddy Mercury, who everyone loves...?

 

Tricky, isn't it? Especially when you factor in the moral quandaries over whether it's acceptable to have one artist cover another without the participation or even the consent of either. 

You can project this into gaming if you like feeling uncomfortable with all your choices. Getting back to Blizzard, if I were to try to sidestep my moral misgivings by signing up to a rogue server running a version of current content, assuming there are any, would I be clear of complicity because none of my time or money would benefit Blizzard? Better yet, maybe the sheer illegality of it would even count as an active strike against the evil empire itself! Let's stick it to The Man, right?

Or would I still be mired in moral misgivings by dint of my continuing enjoyment  of assets and concepts originally created under the same regime I purport to despise? At what remove does something become clean enough for the stain not to show any more? I mean, I drink Fanta sometimes. Doesn't make me a Nazi, does it?

 

Damn. I hit Godwin's law! Time to stop.